Not a Moment Too Soon

His restlessness was a demon sitting on his shoulder and taunting him to stare at the still-lit seat-belt sign. He looked at Shauna, who occupied the window seat. He had the aisle, and they were fortunate, in their row of three, that the middle seat was vacant. Shauna had obviously decided to take advantage. She’d pulled her carry-on bag from beneath the seat in front of her and rested it between them. She wrested her laptop from it, opened her tray table and placed the computer on it.

After she turned it on, a look of concentration etched a small furrow between the soft arches of her brows. They were darker than the deepest blond shade of her long hair, which was still highlighted in soft streaks by the Arizona sun. Her unique hair color was something he had found extraordinarily appealing about her long ago. One of many things.

If there hadn’t been a vacant seat, Hunter wondered if he’d have offered to trade with the person unlucky enough to have been assigned the uncomfortable middle. Would he have wanted to spend this hour separated from Shauna that way?

Not that he had any desire to be close to her…although desire was a poor choice of words. Hell, yes, he still desired her. But long ago he’d made self-control an unbreakable habit. It was the only way his P.I. business could survive.

The only way he could survive.

Without so much as a glance toward him, Shauna began to type. Was she writing another of her damned stories that she would use to drive some other poor jerk mad by claiming it would come true?

Muttering something without quite knowing what, Hunter bent to retrieve his small briefcase from under the seat in front of him and yanked out Shauna’s story. He started to read it…until pain forced him to close his eyes.

When he opened them again, Shauna was watching him.

“Hunter, do you want to talk about—”

He hadn’t brought her along to practice her psychology mumbo jumbo on him. “Is that another of your fortune-telling fairy tales?” His words spit out as he nodded toward her computer. Her graceful fingers still rested on the keyboard as if poised to peck out more nonsense.

“That’s not your business.” Her tone was conversational, but the glint in her eyes told him she was peeved.

She was right. It wasn’t his business, unless it concerned Andee. That didn’t make him any less curious. Or less peeved with himself, too, for taking his anxiety out on her. Again.

Maybe she couldn’t help writing that story. How would he know? It wasn’t like he’d bombarded her with questions before, when they’d been together.

He looked around. At least with all the plane noise, no one could have heard what he’d said.

When he turned back, Shauna’s smile was forced. “Actually, I’m writing the story I started out to do when…when the story about Andee came out. I do that, you know—write little tales I read aloud at story time at Fantasy Fare. Kids who come in tell me what they want to hear, and most often that’s what comes out when I sit at the computer. A boy whose parents bring him about once a week asked for a story about his dog Duke, and that’s what I’m working on.”

“Why didn’t you just write your shaggy-dog story before and leave Andee alone?”

He didn’t mean to ask that. Worse, though he could have taken another of her indignant glares, he hated the renewed look of sympathy she turned on him.

Shauna reached over with her closest hand and pulled his from where it clutched the armrest. He didn’t fight her as she rested it on top of her bag on the seat between them, and squeezed gently. Her hand was much smaller than his, but it was strong. He stared at the point of contact between them, at the light polish on her short nails, her slender, curled fingers, feeling as if her strength suddenly radiated through his skin and up his arm.

But it wasn’t her strength that singed him with that deceptively innocent touch.

“So tell me,” he said, trying to sound conversational as he restrained his anger with this woman and her sympathy and her seemingly unconscious seduction.

Or was he angrier with himself? He had been the one to coerce her into accompanying him. And now that they were together, he acknowledged to himself that he wanted her.

He’d missed her.

“Tell you…?”

“About your stories.” He kept his voice even. “You sit down to write something about a dog and a kidnapping comes out instead?”

Her eyes grew huge. Why were they dampening that way? Was she trying to lay a guilt trip on him for just asking a simple—well, maybe not so simple. Even if he believed it.

“You never asked before,” she said in a soft, husky voice. More forcefully, she continued, “And I know how hard it is for you to even pretend to give credence to my…my—”

“Let’s just use ‘fairy tale’ again,” he said wryly. “It’s all-purpose enough to suit many situations, right?”

The smile on her full, kiss-me-quick-or-die-from-wanting lips quivered for an instant, then grew wistful. “Sure,” she said. “You know I don’t ask for that kind of…fairy tale to come out. The firstborn woman in each generation of my family has the ability. It’s easier in some ways for me since I’ve grown up having computers. My Grandma O’Leary would just be sitting at a table somewhere, go involuntarily into…well, let’s call it a trance, and when she woke up, she found she’d engaged in automatic writing, pen to paper. My mother used a typewriter. I just sit at the computer and what I write is there on the screen when I…when I become conscious of it. I don’t know if I actually go into a trance, but my eyes close.”

“And these stories always come true?” He made little attempt to hide his scorn, especially since he knew what she was going to say. He’d heard this part of her claims before.

“You know the answer,” she said quietly, trying to withdraw her hand for the first time. He didn’t let her, exchanging her firm grip for his own. “It’s not so much that they come true. They are true.”

“Because you sense someone’s emotions? How bizarre is that? Is that why you became a shrink as well as a restaurant owner? To come up with an explanation of how those supposed emotions come from people you don’t even know, like this ‘Big T’? And Andee.” His voice grew hoarse on those last couple of words, and he cleared his throat.

“I never said I could explain why, Hunter. And I became a therapist for other reasons. But, yes, the stories emanate from someone else’s strong emotions while they’re feeling them. Like the people in this one. And those years ago when I picked up on those vicious bank robbers you were after.”

“I didn’t ask about that,” Hunter snapped.

“No, you never did.” Shauna’s voice was sad. “Or at least not in any helpful way. You didn’t want to hear about it then, but if you’d like to now—”

Hunter used the excuse of a slight rumbling behind him to turn his head. A flight attendant asked someone what he wanted to drink. “Some other time,” he said to Shauna. Yeah, like the twenty-second century. Pulling down his tray table, he considered ordering an alcoholic drink but discarded the idea. He needed his wits about him.

“Coffee,” he growled when the flight attendant asked what he wanted. “Black. Thanks.”

But what did he really want?

To be in L.A. a lot faster than this plane was going.

And then, his daughter.

Peace.

And Shauna back in Oasis. Out of his life again.

Every time she was in it, she messed with his mind. Made him feel like he’d lost control of everything important to him.

And that wasn’t all. Even now that he wasn’t touching her, he felt uncomfortable. Physically.

For now, and much too frequently since he’d been in her presence again, the involuntary reactions of his much too impulsive body reminded him vividly of some of the reasons Shauna had once been such an important part of his life.

Shauna took a sip of apple juice, then returned the plastic glass to the tray table of the seat between Hunter and her.

He was sipping his coffee.

And reading, again, her story about Andee’s kidnapping.

Anguish knit his thick, dark brows into a single tortured line. Anguish that she, however unintentionally, had helped to paint there.

She couldn’t change the story. But maybe she could ease the rest of this flight for him, if only a little.

“Tell me about Andee, Hunter,” she said.